USS Azimech (AK-124) was a Crater-classcargo ship commissioned by the US Navy for service in World War II, named after the Azimech, the other name of Spica, the brightest star in constellation Virgo. She was responsible for delivering troops, goods and equipment to locations in the war zone.

Azimech reached Tarawa on 8 January 1944, and began unloading her cargo. The process was hampered by frequent enemy air attacks and reefs in the lagoon which permitted the ship to unload only at high tide. Azimech made additional stops at Makin and Apamama Islands before heading back to Pearl Harbor. After a brief stop in Hawaii, Azimech continued on to the US West Coast and moored at San Pedro, California, on 6 March. Following an availability period at Terminal Island from 10 March until 9 April, she filled her holds with cargo at Oakland, California, and began the voyage back to Hawaii on 26 April.[3]

On 7 May, Azimech sailed from Pearl Harbor with a convoy bound for Majuro, they reached that naval base on 18 May, and reported to Service Squadron 10 for duty. The cargo ship lay at anchor in Majuro lagoon, issuing stores to forces ashore, until 3 June, when she got underway for Eniwetok, after serving at that atoll until 24 August, she steamed back to Hawaii; paused for one day at Pearl Harbor; and then pushed on to the US West Coast.[3]

The ship reached San Francisco, California, on 13 September, to begin reloading operations. While taking on cargo, she also received minor repairs and alterations before heading west again on 26 September, after stops at Pearl Harbor and Eniwetok, Azimech arrived at Ulithi on 2 November. She operated there until 16 November and then steamed in company with Compel to Kossol Roads. Two days later, the ships reached their destination, and Azimech began issuing supplies, on 5 December 1944, the vessel weighed anchor and traveled back to Pearl Harbor via Ulithi and Eniwetok.[3]

Following the holidays, Azimech got underway for Seattle, Washington, and entered the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 16 January 1945, for repairs. On 15 February, she began steaming for Eniwetok and reached that atoll on 11 March. Following eight days at Ulithi, she set sail for the Ryūkyūs.[3]

Azimech remained anchored off Kerama Retto from 18 to 29 April. On the latter day, she shifted berth to Hagushi beach, Okinawa, her base until 7 May, when she sailed for Guam, the cargo ship began loading cargo there on 24 May, and did not finish the task until 8 June. She then got underway for Ulithi and, on 10 June, anchored in that lagoon where she remained for the duration of the war.[3]

On 23 August, Azimech shaped a course for the coast of southern California. Reaching San Pedro, California, on 15 September, the ship unloaded her ammunition and provisions to prepare for a yard period, she sailed again on 13 October, bound for Norfolk, Virginia. After transiting the Panama Canal on 25 October, Azimech reached Hampton Roads on 3 November.[3]

She immediately began preparations for deactivation, the cargo ship moved to Baltimore, Maryland, on 21 November for a final yard period and was decommissioned on 11 December. Her name was struck from the Navy List on 3 January 1946.[3]

1.
Liberty ship
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The Liberty ship was a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, the design was adapted by the United States for its simple, mass-produced on an unprecedented scale, the now iconic Liberty ship came to symbolize U. S. wartime industrial output. The class was developed to meet British orders for transports to replace those torpedoed by German U-boats, the vessels were purchased both for the U. S. fleet and lend-lease deliveries of war materiel to Britain and the Soviet Union. Eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design and their production mirrored on a much larger scale the manufacture of the Hog Islander and similar standardized ship types during World War I. Only three Liberty Ships are preserved, two as operational museum ships. S, the number was doubled in 1939 and again in 1940 to 200 ships a year. Ship types included two tankers and three types of merchant vessel, all to be powered by steam turbines, limited industrial capacity, especially for reduction gears, meant that relatively few of these ships were built. In 1940 the British government ordered 60 Ocean-class freighters from American yards to replace war losses and these were simple but fairly large with a single 2,500 horsepower compound steam engine of obsolete but reliable design. Britain specified coal-fired plants, because it then had extensive coal mines, the order specified an 18-inch increase in draft to boost displacement by 800 long tons to 10,100 long tons. The accommodation, bridge, and main engine were located amidships, the first Ocean-class ship, SS Ocean Vanguard, was launched on 16 August 1941. The design was modified by the United States Maritime Commission, in part to increase conformity to American construction practices, but more importantly to make it even quicker and cheaper to build. The US version was designated EC2-S-C1, EC for Emergency Cargo,2 for a ship between 400 and 450 feet long, S for steam engines, and C1 for design C1. The new design replaced much riveting, which accounted for one-third of the costs, with welding. It was adopted as a Merchant Marine Act design, and production awarded to a conglomerate of West Coast engineering and construction companies headed by Henry J. Kaiser known as the Six Companies. Liberty ships were designed to carry 10,000 long tons of cargo, usually one type per ship, but, during wartime, generally carried loads far exceeding this. On 27 March 1941, the number of ships was increased to 200 by the Defense Aid Supplemental Appropriations Act and increased again in April to 306. By 1941, the turbine was the preferred marine steam engine because of its greater efficiency compared to earlier reciprocating compound steam engines. Eighteen different companies built the engine. It had the advantage of ruggedness and simplicity

2.
Richmond, California
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Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7,1905, under the McLaughlin Administration, Richmond was the largest city in the United States served by a Green Party mayor. As of the 2010 U. S. Census, the population is at 103,710. The largest, Richmond, Virginia, is the namesake of the California city, the Ohlone Indians were the first inhabitants of the Richmond area, settling an estimated 5,000 years ago. The name Richmond appears to predate actual incorporation by more than fifty years, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad had its terminus at Richmond. The first post office opened in 1900, Richmond was founded and incorporated in 1905, carved out of Rancho San Pablo, from which the nearby town of San Pablo inherited its name. Until the enactment of prohibition in 1919, the city had the largest winery in the world, in the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was active in the city. In 1930 the Ford Motor Company opened a plant called Richmond Assembly Plant which moved to Milpitas in the 1960s. The old Ford plant has been a National Historic Place since 1988, the city was a small town at that time, until the onset of World War II which brought on a rush of migrants and a boom in the industrial sector. Standard Oil set up here in 1901, including a what is now the Chevron Richmond Refinery and tank farm. There is a pier into San Francisco Bay south of Point Molate for oil tankers, the western terminus of the Santa Fe Railroad was established in Richmond with ferry connections at Ferry Point in the Brickyard Cove area of Point Richmond to San Francisco. Many of these lived in specially constructed houses scattered throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Richmond, Berkeley. A specially built rail line, the Shipyard Railway, transported workers to the shipyards, kaisers Richmond shipyards built 747 Victory and Liberty ships for the war effort, more than any other site in the U. S. The city broke many records and even built one Liberty ship in a five days. On average the yards could build a ship in thirty days, the medical system established for the shipyard workers at the Richmond Field Hospital eventually became todays Kaiser Permanente HMO. It remained in operation until 1993 when it was replaced by the modern Richmond Medical Center hospital, Point Richmond was originally the commercial hub of the city, but a new downtown arose in the center of the city. It was populated by many department stores such as Kress, J. C. Penney, Sears, Macys, during the war the population increased dramatically and peaked at around 120,000 by the end of the war. Once the war ended the workers were no longer needed

3.
National Defense Reserve Fleet
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The NDRF is managed by the U. S. Department of Transportations Maritime Administration. It is a different entity from the United States Navy reserve fleets, NDRF vessels are at the fleet sites at James River, Virginia–the James River Reserve Fleet, Beaumont, Texas–the Beaumont Reserve Fleet, and Suisun Bay, California, and at designated outported berths. Former anchorage sites included Stony Point, New York - the Hudson River Reserve Fleet, Wilmington, North Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, Astoria, Oregon, and Olympia, Washington. Through the 2010s, the oldest, most decrepit hulls at Suisun Bay will be stripped of materials, then broken up in Texas. Twenty of the most polluting mothball ships are slated for recycling by 2012, at its peak in 1950, the NDRF had 2,277 ships in lay-up. In July 2007, it held 230 ships, primarily dry cargo ships with some tankers, military auxiliaries, by the end of August,2015, it held 100. The NDRF was established under Section 11 of the Merchant Ship Sales Act of 1946 to serve as a reserve of ships for national defense, NDRF vessels were used in seven wars and crises. During the Korean War,540 vessels were out to move military forces. During a worldwide tonnage shortfall in 1951–53, more than 600 ships were reactivated to carry coal to Northern Europe, from 1955 through 1964, another 600 ships were used to store grain for the Department of Agriculture. Another 223 cargo ships and 29 tankers were activated during a tonnage shortfall after the Suez Canal was closed in 1956, during the Berlin crisis of 1961,18 vessels were activated and remained in service until 1970. Another 172 vessels were activated for the Vietnam War and these are crewed with a reduced crew but kept available for activation within four, five, ten or twenty days. An additional 28 ships are held under United States Maritime Administration custody for other Government agencies on a cost-reimbursable basis. Vessels with military utility or logistic value are held in status and are in a preservation program that is designed to keep them in the same condition as when they enter the fleet. The internal spaces are dehumidified to slow the corrosion of metal, DC power is distributed through anodes to the exterior underwater portions of the hull, creating an electric field that suppresses corrosion and preserves the surface of the hull. External painting and other work is generally deferred since it does not affect the ability to activate and operate the vessel. MARAD is authorized as the government’s disposal agent through the NDRF program for merchant type vessels equal to or greater than 1,500 gross tons. A state agency can file an application to request title to a vessel as-is where-is from the NDRF for the purpose of creating an artificial reef, of the 132 non-retention vessels in the NDRF, there are 117 that are being prepared for disposal. The NDRF program can give and lend historic artifacts to maritime-heritage organizations, battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers which have been stricken or those awaiting final disposition may be transferred to MARAD locations for berthing

4.
James River
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The James River is a river in the U. S. state of Virginia. It is 348 miles long, extending to 444 miles if one includes the Jackson River, the James River drains a catchment comprising 10,432 square miles. The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million people and it is the 12th longest river in the United States that remains entirely within a single state. Tidal waters extend west to Richmond, the capital of Virginia, larger tributaries draining to the tidal portion include the Appomattox River, Chickahominy River, Warwick River, Pagan River, and the Nansemond River. At its mouth near Newport News Point, the Elizabeth River, many boats pass through this river to import and export Virginia products. The navigable portion of the river was the highway of the Colony of Virginia during its first 15 years, facilitating supply ships delivering supplies. However, for the first five years, despite many hopes of gold and riches, in 1612, businessman John Rolfe successfully cultivated a non-native strain of tobacco which proved popular in England. Soon, the became the primary means of exporting the large hogsheads of this cash crop from an ever-growing number of plantations with wharfs along its banks. This development made the efforts of the Virginia Company of London successful financially, spurring even more development, investments. The upper reaches of the river above the head of navigation at the line were explored by fur trading parties sent by Abraham Wood during the late 17th century. Although ocean-going ships were unable to navigate beyond present-day Richmond, portage of products, produce from the Piedmont and Great Valley regions traveled down the river to seaports at Richmond and Manchester through such port towns as Lynchburg, Scottsville, Columbia and Buchanan. The James River was considered as a route for transport of produce from the Ohio Valley, the James River and Kanawha Canal was built for this purpose, to provide a navigable portion of the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River. For the most mountainous section between the two points, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike was built to provide a link via wagons. However, before the canal could be completed, in the mid-19th century, railroads emerged as a more practical technology. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was completed between Richmond and the Ohio River at the new city of Huntington, West Virginia by 1873, dooming the canals economic prospects. In the 1880s, the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad was laid along the portion of the canals towpath. In modern times, this line is used primarily in transporting West Virginia coal to export coal piers at Newport News. The James River contains numerous parks and other recreational attractions, canoeing, fishing, kayaking, hiking, and swimming are some of the activities that people enjoy along the river during the summer

5.
Lee Hall, Virginia
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Lee Hall is a former unincorporated town long located in the former Warwick County. Since 1958, Lee Hall has been a community in the extreme western portion of the independent city of Newport News in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The mansion was used as headquarters for Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston, magruder during the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War in 1862. Nearby is Endview Plantation, a 238-year-old house, Endview was used as a hospital during the Civil War and as a campground during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The Boxwood Inn was built in 1897, Lee Hall Depot became a very busy railroad station after the establishment nearby of Fort Eustis in 1918, with freight and heavy troop movements. The busy activity resumed during World War II and it was expanded to accommodate this role. East of Lee Hall, a spur leads to the base. With the coming of the automobile as a form of travel in the early 20th century. As part of the Good Roads Movement, the new road which became U. S. Route 60 was routed from Williamsburg through Grove and this routing was chosen rather than following a competing route via Halsteads Point in York County. Earlier, the east-west road which became U. S.60 was State Route 9, SR9 was renumbered as State Route 39 in 1923, and became U. S.60 in the mid-1920s when it was routed through Grove. The village portion of Lee Hall is connected to I-64 via State Route 238, the 26th Balloon Company of the US Army Air Corps had a training school at Lee Hall at least during the summer of 1920 training soldiers for deployment to central and South America service. In the 21st century, Lee Hall Depot is the only surviving C&O structure of its type on the Lower Peninsula. Across the street from the Depot, the Boxwood Inn, a bed and breakfast establishment in an 1896 house, is open and available for overnight visitors and some meals. The citys tourism agency operates several other attractions at Lee Hall Mansion and Endview Plantation, the Lee Hall community is served by exit 247 of Interstate 64. About 1 block from the railroad station, U. S. Route 60. Lee Hall is served by both Hampton Roads Transit and Williamsburg Area Transit Authority, for direct service to the Williamsburg Amtrak and Greyhound/Carolina Trailways station, ride the WATA Grey Line to the Williamsburg Transportation Center. For service to the Newport News Amtrak station, ride the 116 and transfer to the 106 or 107 to get to the Newport News Amtrak station

6.
Cargo ship
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A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the worlds seas and oceans each year, cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes. Today, they are almost always built by welded steel, cargo ships/freighters can be divided into five groups, according to the type of cargo they carry. Tankers carry petroleum products or other liquid cargo, dry bulk carriers carry coal, grain, ore and other similar products in loose form. Multi-purpose vessels, as the name suggests, carry different classes of cargo – e. g. liquid, a Reefer ship is specifically designed and used for shipping perishable commodities which require temperature-controlled, mostly fruits, meat, fish, vegetables, dairy products and other foodstuffs. Specialized types of cargo vessels include ships and bulk carriers. Cargo ships fall into two categories that reflect the services they offer to industry, liner and tramp services. Those on a published schedule and fixed tariff rates are cargo liners. Tramp ships do not have fixed schedules, users charter them to haul loads. Generally, the shipping companies and private individuals operate tramp ships. Cargo liners run on fixed schedules published by the shipping companies, each trip a liner takes is called a voyage. However, some cargo liners may carry passengers also, a cargo liner that carries 12 or more passengers is called a combination or passenger-cum-cargo line. The desire to trade routes over longer distances, and throughout more seasons of the year. Before the middle of the 19th century, the incidence of piracy resulted in most cargo ships being armed, sometimes heavily, as in the case of the Manila galleons. They were also escorted by warships. Piracy is still common in some waters, particularly in the Malacca Straits. In 2004, the governments of three nations agreed to provide better protection for the ships passing through the Straits. The waters off Somalia and Nigeria are also prone to piracy, while smaller vessels are also in danger along parts of the South American, Southeast Asian coasts, the words cargo and freight have become interchangeable in casual usage

7.
Joshua Hendy Iron Works
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The Joshua Hendy Iron Works was an American engineering company that existed from the 1850s to the late 1940s. It was at one time a leader in mining technology and its equipment was used to build the Panama Canal. The company was named for its founder Joshua Hendy, born in Cornwall, England in 1822, Hendy at the age of 13 migrated with two brothers to South Carolina in the United States. Hendy built Californias first redwood lumber mill, the Benicia Sawmill, in 1856, he established the Joshua Hendy Iron Works in San Francisco to supply equipment to Gold Rush placer miners. The Hendy plant supplied various equipment to the mining industry, Hendy giant hydraulic crushers were used to excavate the Panama Canal. After Joshua Hendy died in 1891, management of the company was taken over by his nephews Samuel, in 1906 a fire devastated the original San Francisco factory, and the company was re-established in Sunnyvale, California after the local government enticed the company with free land. During World War I, the Hendy plant gained its first experience building marine engines by supplying 11 triple expansion engines for cargo ships built by Western Pipe & Steel. Each engine weighed about 137 tons and stood 24½ feet high, although the first marine engines built by Hendy, they proved to be reliable, with most providing many years of service. Essentially the same engine was used for production of US Liberty ship engines in World War II. In the early 1920s, Hendys hydraulic mining equipment was used in the regrading of Seattle, with the onset of the Great Depression however, and hampered by indifferent management, the Hendy Iron Works - like many other heavy equipment manufacturers of the era - fell on hard times. The company adapted by finding new markets, for example by contracting for the building of giant gates and valves for the schemes of the Hoover, Boulder. During this period it also produced equipment as diverse as crawler tractors, freight car wheel pullers, parts for internal combustion engines, some of the ornate street lamps built by the company can still be seen in San Franciscos Chinatown district today. By the late 1930s the company was in difficulties and had shrunk to a shadow of its former self. The company was in the process of being taken over by the Bank of California in 1940 when businessman Charles E. Moore, with the support of the Six Companies. By 1942, with the US governments wartime Emergency Shipbuilding Program getting underway, the company was then contracted to build 118 triple expansion steam engines for the Liberty ships. As the war progressed and the shipbuilding program continued to expand. Moore responded by streamlining production at the Joshua Hendy plant and he introduced more advanced assembly line techniques, standardizing on more production parts and enabling less skilled workers to accomplish tasks formerly carried out by skilled machinists. By 1943, the company had reduced the required to manufacture a marine steam engine from 4,500 hours to 1,800 hours

8.
Steam engine
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A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. Steam engines are combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be used. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle, in the cycle, water is heated and transforms into steam within a boiler operating at a high pressure. When expanded through pistons or turbines, mechanical work is done, the reduced-pressure steam is then exhausted to the atmosphere, or condensed and pumped back into the boiler. Specialized devices such as hammers and steam pile drivers are dependent on the steam pressure supplied from a separate boiler. The use of boiling water to mechanical motion goes back over 2000 years. The Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont obtained the first patent for an engine in 1606. In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a steam pump that used steam in direct contact with the water being pumped, Saverys steam pump used condensing steam to create a vacuum and draw water into a chamber, and then applied pressurized steam to further pump the water. Thomas Newcomens atmospheric engine was the first commercial steam engine using a piston. In 1781 James Watt patented an engine that produced continuous rotary motion. Watts ten-horsepower engines enabled a range of manufacturing machinery to be powered. The engines could be sited anywhere that water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained, by 1883, engines that could provide 10,000 hp had become feasible. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, the aeolipile described by Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century AD is considered to be the first recorded steam engine. Torque was produced by steam jets exiting the turbine, in the Spanish Empire, the great inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont obtained a patent for the first steam engine in history in 1603. Thomas Savery, in 1698, patented the first practical, atmospheric pressure and it had no piston or moving parts, only taps. It was an engine, a kind of thermic syphon, in which steam was admitted to an empty container. The vacuum thus created was used to water from the sump at the bottom of the mine

9.
Drive shaft
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As torque carriers, drive shafts are subject to torsion and shear stress, equivalent to the difference between the input torque and the load. They must therefore be enough to bear the stress, whilst avoiding too much additional weight as that would in turn increase their inertia. The term drive shaft first appeared during the mid 19th century, in Stovers 1861 patent reissue for a planing and matching machine, the term is used to refer to the belt-driven shaft by which the machine is driven. The term is not used in his original patent, another early use of the term occurs in the 1861 patent reissue for the Watkins and Bryson horse-drawn mowing machine. Here, the term refers to the transmitting power from the machines wheels to the gear train that works the cutting mechanism. In the 1890s, the term began to be used in a closer to the modern sense. In 1899, Bukey used the term to describe the shaft transmitting power from the wheel to the machinery by a universal joint in his Horse-Power. In the same year, Clark described his Marine Velocipede using the term to refer to the shaft transmitting power through a universal joint to the propeller shaft. Crompton used the term to refer to the shaft between the transmission of his steam-powered Motor Vehicle of 1903 and the driven axle, an automobile may use a longitudinal shaft to deliver power from an engine/transmission to the other end of the vehicle before it goes to the wheels. A pair of short drive shafts is commonly used to power from a central differential, transmission. In front-engined, rear-drive vehicles, a drive shaft is also required to send power the length of the vehicle. Two forms dominate, The torque tube with a universal joint. This system became known as Système Panhard after the automobile company Panhard et Levassor patented it, most of these vehicles have a clutch and gearbox mounted directly on the engine, with a drive shaft leading to a final drive in the rear axle. When the vehicle is stationary, the drive shaft does not rotate, some vehicles, seeking improved weight balance between front and rear, use a rear-mounted transaxle. This places the clutch and transmission at the rear of the car, in this case the drive shaft rotates continuously with the engine, even when the car is stationary and out of gear. A drive shaft connecting a rear differential to a wheel may be called a half-shaft. The name derives from the fact that two such shafts are required to one rear axle. Early automobiles often used chain drive or belt drive mechanisms rather than a drive shaft, some used electrical generators and motors to transmit power to the wheels

10.
Miles per hour
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Miles per hour is an imperial and United States customary unit of speed expressing the number of statute miles covered in one hour. Miles per hour is the also used in the Canadian rail system. In some countries mph may be used to express the speed of delivery of a ball in sporting events such as cricket, tennis, road traffic speeds in other countries are indicated in kilometres per hour, while occasionally both systems are used. For example, in Ireland, a considered a speeding case by examining speeds in both kilometres per hour and miles per hour. The judge was quoted as saying the speed seemed very excessive at 180 km/h but did not look as bad at 112 mph, nautical and aeronautical applications, however, favour the knot as a common unit of speed. 1 Mph =0.000277778 Mps Example, Apollo 11 attained speeds of 25,000 Mph, if Apollo 11 were to travel at 25,000 Mph from New York to Los Angeles it would reach Los Angeles in under 6 minutes

11.
5"/38 caliber gun
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The Mark 12 5/38 caliber gun was a US naval gun. The gun was installed into Single Purpose and Dual Purpose mounts used primarily by the US Navy, the 38 caliber barrel was a mid-length compromise between the previous United States standard 5/51 low-angle gun and 5/25 anti-aircraft gun. The increased barrel length provided greatly improved performance in both anti-aircraft and anti-surface roles compared to the 5/25 gun, however, except for the barrel length and the use of semi-fixed ammunition, the 5/38 gun was derived from the 5/25 gun. Both weapons had power ramming, which enabled rapid fire at high angles against aircraft, the 5/38 entered service on USS Farragut, commissioned in 1934. The base ring mount, which improved the rate of fire, entered service on USS Gridley. Even this advanced system required nearly 100 rounds of ammunition expenditure per aircraft kill, however, the planes were normally killed by shell fragments and not direct hits, barrage fire was used, with many guns firing in the air at the same time. Base ring mounts with integral hoists had a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute per barrel, however. On pedestal and other mounts lacking integral hoists,12 to 15 rounds per minute was the rate of fire, useful life expectancy was 4600 effective full charges per barrel. The 5/38 cal gun was mounted on a large number of US Navy ships in the World War II era. It was backfitted to many of the World War I-era battleships during their wartime refits and it has left active US Navy service, but it is still on mothballed ships of the United States Navy reserve fleets. It is also used by a number of nations who bought or were given US Navy surplus ships, each mount carries one or two Mk 12 5/38cal Gun Assemblies. The gun assembly shown is used in single mounts, and it is the gun in twin mounts. It is loaded from the left side, the left gun in twin mounts is the mirror image of the right gun, and it is loaded from the right side. The Mk12 gun assembly weighs 3,990 lb, the major Mk12 Gun Assembly characteristics are,158 Semi-automatic During recoil, some of the recoil energy is stored in the counter-recoil system. That stored energy is used during counter-recoil to prepare the gun for the next round, the firing pin is cocked, the breech is opened, the spent powder case is ejected, and the bore is air cleaned. Hand loaded A Projectile-Man and a Powder-Man are stationed at each gun assembly and their job is to move the round, consisting of a projectile and a powder case, from the hoists to the rammer tray, and then start the ram cycle. The hydraulically driven Rammer Spade, called the Power Spade in that picture, is at the back of the Rammer Tray, if the multiple names of the Spade is confusing, look at this footnote. Vertical sliding-wedge breech block The breech block closes the chamber behind the powder case and it also holds the firing pin assembly

12.
3"/50 caliber gun
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For Army 3-inch gun see 3-inch M1918 gun The 3″/50 caliber gun in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile 3 inches in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long. Different guns of this caliber were used by the U. S. Navy and U. S. Coast Guard from 1890 through the 1990s on a variety of combatant and transport ship classes. The US Navys first 3″/50 caliber gun was a model with a projectile velocity of 2,100 feet per second. Low-angle mountings for this gun had a range of 7000 yards at the elevation of 15 degrees. The gun entered service around 1900 with the Bainbridge-class destroyers, and was fitted to Connecticut-class battleships. By World War II these guns were only on a few Coast Guard cutters. These guns fired the same 2,700 feet per second used by the following dual-purpose Marks. These were built-up guns with a tube, partial-length jacket, hoop, dual-purpose 3″/50 caliber guns first entered service in 1915 as a refit to USS Texas, and were subsequently mounted on many types of ships as the need for anti-aircraft protection was recognized. They also replaced the original low-angle 4/50 caliber guns on flush-deck Wickes and these dual-purpose guns were quick-firing, meaning that they used fixed ammunition, with powder case and projectile permanently attached, and handled as a single unit weighing 34 pounds. Maximum range was 14,600 yards at 45 degrees elevation, useful life expectancy was 4300 effective full charges per barrel. The 3/50 caliber gun Marks 17 and 18 was first used as a deck gun on R-class submarines launched in 1918-1919. At the time it was an improvement on the earlier 3/23 caliber gun, after using larger guns on many other submarines, the 3/50 caliber gun Mark 21 was specified as the standard deck gun on the Porpoise- through Gato-class submarines launched in 1935-1942. The small gun was chosen to remove the temptation to engage enemy vessels on the surface. The gun was mounted aft of the conning tower to reduce submerged drag. Wartime experience showed that larger guns were needed and this need was initially met by transferring 4/50 caliber guns from S-class submarines as they were shifted from combat to training roles from late 1942. Later, the 5/25 caliber gun, initially removed from battleships sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor and later manufactured in a submarine version, post-war experimentation with an extended range variant was abandoned as shipboard surface-to-air missiles were developed. The United States Navy considered contemporary 5/38 caliber guns and 5″/54 caliber guns more effective against surface targets, the 3″/50 caliber gun was a semiautomatic anti-aircraft weapon with a power driven automatic loader. These monobloc 3″ guns were fitted to both single and twin mountings, the single was to be exchanged for a twin 40 mm antiaircraft gun mount and the twin for a quadruple 40 mm mount

The Bofors 40 mm gun, often referred to simply as the Bofors gun, is an anti-aircraft/multi-purpose autocannon designed …

British Bofors 40 mm L/60 on a 360 degree turret mount, England.

Finnish Bofors 40 mm. This gun mounts the original reflector sights, and lacks the armor found on British examples.

British 40mm L/60 includes the British-designed Stiffkey Sight, being operated by the gun layer standing on the right. The layer operates the trapeze seen above the sights, moving them to adjust for lead. The loader stands to the layer's left, and the two trainer/aimers are sitting on either side of the gun.

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the …

Image: Bay of Fundy High Tide

In Maine (U.S.) low tide occurs roughly at moonrise and high tide with a high moon, corresponding to the simple gravity model of two tidal bulges; at most places however, moon and tides have a phase shift.